A website is a powerful tool for businesses, period. When you’ve got your website up and running, you would want to make sure it looks great and that it actually works. However, just because something works, does not mean it can’t be better.Sometimes doing a website revamp work gives you a good better business.
Whether it’s to improve your user experience or add new features, a website redesign is a phase that every business has to go through at some point. The thing is, if you want your redesign process to go smoothly and not be over budget or come out late, then you need to do some planning for it.
If you haven’t gotten around to it, then we’ve got just the tips on how to plan your website revamp for 2018.
Re-evaluate and re-define your business and website
Before you even entertain the notion of revamping your website, you need to understand why you’re doing it in the first place. Take a look at your website and find out what your current design has accomplished what it lacks, and whether it still fits the objective of your business.
We recommend doing a re-evaluation of your business and website as a whole before moving forward.
A few questions that you might want to ask yourself are:
- What is your company’s brand and can your audience understand it?
- Are you consistently reaching the sales/goals/targets for your business? If not, what can you do to improve it?
- Is your current design user-friendly and visually appealing?
- Are you improving your site’s SEO, Google analytics, and ranking, etc.?
- Are your metrics (bounce rate, traffic, conversion rates, etc.) on track for your website? What can you do to improve it?
These are just a few things you would want to consider before actually redesigning your website. Answering these questions will give you a better understanding of what you can aim to achieve with the revamp and make the whole process much more smoother.
Side note: If you’re just looking to improve your site’s visual or convey better information, a total redesign might not be necessary. You can keep your current site’s look but refresh it with new design elements.
Set your design goals and objectives
Once you’ve understood the current design of your website, it’s time to set your sight on what you want to achieve in the near future. A plan without a goal is basically a car without wheels, you’ll get nowhere fast!
With a website goal set in mind, it will allow you to have a set direction to follow for your website’s new design. While we recommend that you make your goals as specific and as quantitative as possible, it doesn’t have to be complicated at all.
Focus on the most basic premise of your business’ goals and expand from there. For example, if your goal was to gain more leads, then you should make your site optimized for search engine and social media platforms. If you want to make visiting your site a smoother experience for users, you might want to make your site’s design much more streamlined (hint: a good website builder also helps!).
List out all the goals on a worksheet so that you and your designer have an idea and reference for your site’s redesign and its primary objectives.
Determine your budget and stick to it
This is probably one of the hardest parts of revamping a website, setting the website budget. Not all of us have an unlimited amount of money and resources so it’s probably better to have a clear idea of what your budget is before you start spending on fancy website designs and upgrades.
A set budget also helps you stay on track with the goals you want to achieve and avoid overspending on unnecessary extra features. For example, you might have the budget to add a cool HTML5 video on your homepage, but that might mean skipping out on features for your site’s blog page.
- Make an estimate of much you intend to spend that’s in line with your goals and stick to it.
- Make your process clear with a roadmap
Now comes the fun part, actually visualizing what your website redesign is going to look like and the process it’s going to take build it. At this point, you should have a clear and detailed idea of how you would want your new site to look like.
A roadmap doesn’t have to be a complicated affair. It can as simple as a list of objectives (i.e., a dedicated forum to encourage community, updated content for readers, a new homepage with better branding & images, etc.) that you would want to implement for your website’s redesign. The key point here is to be as detailed as possible.
If you’re doing the entire redesign by yourself, a roadmap will function as a checklist of sorts that helps keep track of your progress. If you’re working with a designer or going for third-party website templates, it can be used a reference for your designer as well as a communication tool to update on major milestones or tentative deadlines.
Time to get to work
You’ve gone through the hard part of planning. You’ve spent hours on your computer filling up your spreadsheets and word docs with all the necessary details. Now comes the time to actually do it. The hardest step to take is always the first step, but once you’ve done that, it’s easy to keep going.
So what are you waiting for? Take that first step and get to work on revamping your website!
Leave a Reply